Origin Theatre Company presents the North American premiere of the internationally acclaimed Swedish novelist and playwright Jonas Hassen Khemiri's "The Hundred We Are." The fascinatingly timely memory play's limited Off-Broadway engagement performs at the cell, 338 West 23rd Street, from Wednesday March 16 to Friday April 8, with an Off-Broadway opening on Monday March 21 at 8pm.
Directed by Erwin Maas, and translated from Swedish by
Frank Perry, "The Hundred We Are" telescopes the disparate lives of three women into one profound saga that speaks to our deeply polarized generation. Origin Theatre, which specializes in introducing some of Europe's most compelling contemporary playwrights to New York audiences in brand new productions, also teams up with the ex-pat communities of the author's home countries to develop additional cultural programming. Beginning Saturday February 27, Origin presents "Northern Lights," a four-day celebration of Nordic culture, curated by Maas, at Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue. For more information visit
www.origintheatre.org This production of "The Hundred We Are" is supported by the Consulate General of Sweden.
Featured in the cast of 3 are
Orlagh Cassidy,
Kitty Chen, and
Mirirai Sithole.
The show's production design team includes
Jack Gilliat (technical production design), Derek Van Heel (lighting),
Sam LaFrage (sound design), and
Jenny Green (costumes). Michael Palmer is the production stage manager.
In "The Hundred We Are," the stories of three women -- a young radical, a middle-aged housewife, and a clear-eyed world-traveler -- unexpectedly merge. Will they share the same fate of missing their true potential, or will they somehow reach beyond their individual limitations? The Post Script Journal called the play "surreal, playful and quietly devastating. It is about the multiplicity of the individual, the unreliable nature of memories and the lies we tell ourselves."
Khemiri's third play, "The Hundred We Are" received the Hedda Award for Best Play in its Norwegian premiere in 2010. His first play, "Invasion!" premiered in New York in 2011 at the
Flea Theater, picking up a 2011 Obie Award for playwriting. Khemiri's "I Call My Brothers" was seen in 2014 at the New Ohio Theatre.
Khemiri is the winner of multiple literary awards in Sweden, including the August Award for Fiction Book of the Year (which he won last year for "Everything I Don't Remember"). His novel, "The Silence of the Tiger," was published by Knopf in the U.S. in 2011. In 2013, an open letter he addressed to Sweden's Minister of Justice in response to a controversial immigration program and the problem of racial profiling was published in Sweden's largest daily newspaper before becoming an extensively shared social media phenomenon. The article was also reprinted in The NY Times.
A New York-based director of theater and opera from the Netherlands, Maas is the director of programming for Origin Theatre. His directing work in New York has been staged at the Atlantic Theater, HERE, Ontological-Hysteric Theatre, the Cherry Lane, and for Pocket Opera of New York, and the American Opera Projects. From 2010 to 2014, he was the director of performing arts for the Royal Netherlands Embassy and Consulates in the USA.
Known as an incubator of innovative new works of theatre, the cell frequently presents premieres in the Origin's 1st Irish Theatre Festival. Among the much-lauded Off-Broadway premieres brought to life at the cell for the Festival are the musical "Hard Times," and the drama "The International."
Origin Theatre Company (George C. Heslin the artistic director) is the city's only theatre company devoted to presenting the American premieres of new works by Europe's brightest contemporary playwrights. Over the past 13 years, Origin has introduced works by 150 playwrights to US audiences, from such countries as Romania, Macedonia, Norway, Ireland and the United Kingdom. A year-round theatre company based in New York, Origin is widely known for producing the annual Origin's 1st Irish Theatre Festival. For information on Origin visit
www.origintheatre.org.
"The Hundred We Are" performs Wednesday March 16 to Friday April 8 (with an opening on Monday March 21 at 8pm), at the cell, 338 West 23rd Street (between 8th & 9th Avenues). Performances are Wednesday to Saturday at 8pm; and Sunday at 3pm. For tickets, which are $35, call
866-811-4111, or visit
www.origintheatre.org (Running time: 80 minutes.)
